Book: Harmattan
Author: Gavin Weston
Publisher: Myrmidon Books
Review by Joy Francis
Harmattan, Arabic for a dry, dusty wind that blows from the Sahara across West Africa, unveils the challenging life of Haoua, a bright, thoughtful and brave 11 year old girl growing up in a remote village in the Republic of Niger.
One of four children, her passion for learning knows no bounds. Sponsored by a family in Northern Ireland, she is able to go to school, unlike many of her female peers. She helps her mother and father tend the land and receives regular letters from her sponsor family’s two daughters.
But there is tension. Abdelkrim, her eldest brother and a serving soldier, is at odds with his father who he despises for gambling away the money he donates to the family. Meanwhile his father is unimpressed by the fact that his son defies his Muslim upbringing by drinking alcohol. He is also threatened that his daughter is at school learning instead of pulling her weight at home with her mother.
Brewing in the background is a civil war that threatens their humble way of life. Haoua’s sense of security and familiarity is threatened when her mother contracts HIV from her husband, who has been sleeping with a local prostitute. Yet the community stigmatises her for bringing shame on the family.
Haoua’s mother’s declining health thrusts her into a more emotionally precarious life when she is taken out of school, is physically abused by her father’s new spouse, faces a double bereavement and is married off at 12 years old.
Despite the visual richness of the writing, from Haoua’s clothing and mannerisms to Niger’s vibrant culture, characters and the local people’s suspicion of the white person (anasara), it is also quite restrained.
Weston doesn’t do gory or sensationalism. He is almost journalistic in his perceptions and detail (there is a glossary of Arabic, French and Nigerien terms at the beginning of the book for reference).
Like a slightly dispassionate but morally conscious foreign correspondent, he wants the story to be as clear and truthful as possible. After quite a dramatic and poignant opening, Weston takes a long time to tell Haoua’s story, which occasionally requires patience.
What does make his hackles rise is the double standards of the Nigerien men in their misogynistic treatment of women. Haoua’s father and his unsavoury cousin Moussa reflect the worse traits of these kinds of men: selfish, unforgiving, exploitative, sexually irresponsible and oppressive.
Thankfully Weston takes care to balance this potentially one-sided stereotype with scattered examples of more sympathetic men, including Haoua’s elder brother Abdelkrim, and the fathers of her friends.
Weston has acknowledged (and actually apologised for) the improbability of a “middle aged white man” writing about a very likeable 11 year old black girl from Niger. When you realise that Weston and his family sponsored a young African girl for six years before she unexpectedly became a child bride before her twelfth birthday, his diligent approach to telling Haoua’s story makes sense.
Although the book tells a mostly engaging story, rooted in a disappointing cultural reality of interest to adults and activists, I am not convinced I am truly its main target audience. In the end it feels like an important book for young adults to read. I hope they do.